Biometrics applications: physical access This is the largest area of application of biometric technologies, and the most direct lineage to the feudal gate keeping system. Initially mainly used in military and other "high security" territories, physical access control by biometric technology is spreading into a much wider field of application. Biometric access control technologies are already being used in schools, supermarkets, hospitals and commercial centres, where the are used to manage the flow of personnel. Biometric technologies are also used to control access to political territory, as in immigration (airports, Mexico-USA border crossing). In this case, they can be coupled with camera surveillance systems and artificial intelligence in order to identify potential suspects at unmanned border crossings. Examples of such uses in remote video inspection systems can be found at http://www.eds-ms.com/acsd/RVIS.htm A gate keeping system for airports relying on digital fingerprint and hand geometry is described at http://www.eds-ms.com/acsd/INSPASS.htm. This is another technology which allows separating "low risk" travellers from "other" travellers. An electronic reconstruction of feudal gate keeping capable of singling out high-risk travellers from the rest is already applied at various border crossing points in the USA. "All enrolees are compared against national lookout databases on a daily basis to ensure that individuals remain low risk". As a side benefit, the economy of time generated by the inspection system has meant that "drug seizures ... have increased since Inspectors are able to spend more time evaluating higher risk vehicles". However, biometric access control can not only prevent people from gaining access on to a territory or building, they can also prevent them from getting out of buildings, as in the case of prisons.

TEXTBLOCK 1/1 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611729/100438658838

MIT The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is a privately controlled coeducational institution of higher learning famous for its scientific and technological training and research. It was chartered by the state of Massachusetts in 1861 and became a land-grant college in 1863. During the 1930s and 1940s the institute evolved from a well-regarded technical school into an internationally known center for scientific and technical research. In the days of the Great Depression, its faculty established prominent research centers in a number of fields, most notably analog computing (led by Vannevar Bush) and aeronautics (led by Charles Stark Draper). During World War II, MIT administered the Radiation Laboratory, which became the nation's leading center for radar research and development, as well as other military laboratories. After the war, MIT continued to maintain strong ties with military and corporate patrons, who supported basic and applied research in the physical sciences, computing, aerospace, and engineering. MIT has numerous research centers and laboratories. Among its facilities are a nuclear reactor, a computation center, geophysical and astrophysical observatories, a linear accelerator, a space research center, supersonic wind tunnels, an artificial intelligence laboratory, a center for cognitive science, and an international studies center. MIT's library system is extensive and includes a number of specialized libraries; there are also several museums.

INDEXCARD, 1/1